


oh, i need this

by thecarlysutra



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reunion Sex, Reunions, Touch-Starved, sexual healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:23:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17424956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: SUMMARY:After Thanos, Bruce and Natasha find each other.AUTHOR'S NOTES:Written for my Marvel Trumps Hate winner, feldman, based on their prompt,touch starvation. Innumerable thanks to escritoireazul for the beta. Title from Natalie Merchant's "My Skin".





	oh, i need this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feldman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/gifts).



  
When it comes to it, she doesn't ask where he's been. Maybe she should, but what is should anymore? There are things that matter, and things that don't, and it turns out that doesn't. 

They are in the lab in the palace, a small room away from everything. Bruce has found medical supplies, a first aid kit. Natasha sits on the table in front of him, and Bruce uses tweezers to pull splinters out of her face and hands. He presses alcohol to her wounds and he flinches but she doesn't. 

There's a wound on her side, blood sticking her suit to her. Bruce gets myopic sometimes when he's working, and he just says, “Take your clothes off,” as he's unpackaging gauze. By the time he realizes what he's asked her, flushing and fumbling, she is already on her feet, unzipping, pulling the suit away from the wound. 

Her ribs are bruised, and there's a jagged cut below them. Bruce sees it and goes into doctor mode again. He braces his free hand on her hip as he presses a thick wad of gauze to the cut. 

_Natasha is 14 in the Red Room the first time a man touches her in a way that isn't training on the mat. Madame B tells her she has other weapons. No one has ever told her she's beautiful, and when Madame B gives her lipstick and blush, they're for strategic purposes only. To sharpen these other weapons, the ones that are in the shape of her lips and the color of her eyes. As she grows older, Natasha wants the men to touch her the way she wants a target to come into view in the scope of her gun. It's not for her. She isn't allowed to want anything for herself._

“You're going to need stitches,” Bruce says. Natasha looks where he's looking, at the blood darkening the gauze. “Natasha, hold this; I'll see if I can find some anesthetic.”

She holds the gauze to her side, and he leaves her there alone. She remembers the feel of his hands on her body, his touch competent and gentle. How she's longed for it. How much she misses it now, after only just a moment. 

_“I guess we missed our moment.”_

_“Did we?”_

Bruce comes back with supplies. He lays them down and looks at her. 

“May I?” 

She doesn't know what he's asking, but anything he wants, the answer is yes. He lifts her up onto the treatment table. 

“Lay down on your side. Can you? Here, let me help.”

His hands on her body, helping to move her so the wound beneath her bruised ribs is positioned up, ready for his needle and thread. He readies a syringe. 

“Anesthetic,” he says. “Just a little pinch, on three: One, two, three.”

The point of the syringe sinks into her side, and she feels warmth flood her muscles there as the drug pushes its way in. Bruce waits a moment, readying the other supplies, swabbing her wound with iodine. He presses gently on the edge of the tear: “Does that hurt?” 

“No. I only feel pressure.”

“Good.” He threads his needle. “Here we go.”

His hands are steady, and the stitches he places are small and neat. He has good hands. Natasha wants his hands in her hair, on her breasts, wants his arms around her and his lips against her own. 

She lies still as she can while he finishes stitching her up. 

She's never been allowed to want anything for herself. She thinks of the past few years, tries to arrange the pieces so they make sense. She dyed her hair. She taught Wanda how to speak with an American accent. She crossed off places on a map, everywhere she'd been, everywhere Bruce wasn't. 

Wanda is gone. The map is meaningless. She has not touched anyone except to harm them in a long time. 

Bruce has finished his stitches. He puts down the needle and puts one hand on her waist, one around her hand, to help her sit up. They are the same height this way, eye to eye. 

“You've been gone,” she says. He nods. She pretends she can't hear the break in her voice as she says, “So have I.”

Bruce bows his head. Impossibly, he thinks it's his fault. He doesn't know what happened after the Accords. He doesn't know how this started. There are things that matter now, and things that don't, and that doesn't. 

“Look at me,” she says, and the way he looks at her, like she is precious, like she is divine, _that_ matters. She reaches up and touches his face, just her fingertips at first, like she's reading him in Braille. Bruce takes her wrist in his hand, and he brings her palm to his mouth and kisses it. Natasha's breathing is becoming labored, and they're barely touching. This would be tame in a Jane Austen novel, but she needs it so badly, has needed it, that it's more important than oxygen. 

It's just seconds, and her fingers are threaded through his hair and his arms are around her, and her knees are pressing against his hips to hold him in place, because if he goes again something in her will break. He is kissing her, her mouth, her neck, her face, and she closes her eyes and just feels it. 

“I've never wanted anything the way I want you,” she whispers. 

“Natasha,” he says, and no one's ever said her name like that, like it's gold in their mouth, like it's a wish. 

He just holds her for a moment, and then he is gently unclasping her bra, his mouth and his hands on her breasts, and she is tearing open his shirt because she wants to feel him, all of him, his skin on her skin and his pulse thrumming into her flesh. He's rougher with her panties; she feels the elastic dig into her hip and hears the fabric rip, and they both fumble with the zipper on his pants, and then he is dipping her back slightly, just enough to make her head swim, and they stay there for a moment, everything balanced off center like they could topple off the earth any second. But it is only a moment, and then he is pulling her against him and pushing into her sex in one firm, perfect, decisive stroke. Natasha locks her legs around his hips, and their hearts are lined up, pressed against each other, playing on the same beat. Ba-bum, ba-bum, and Bruce moves inside her to the same rhythm, and Natasha _dilates_. She feels open the way a flower opens, everything revealed, everything offered, all the sweetness of spring. He kisses her everywhere, touches her everywhere. She wants all of it, all of him and he gives it to her. 

They took a loss today, the biggest of their lives. But they found something, too. Natasha doesn't know what happens next. She doesn't have a plan, except to run with it. 

Afterwards, Bruce sags against her and Natasha holds his head to her chest, her fingers combing gently through his hair. Outside, the sky is black. The stars are coming out. It would be a mistake to pretend that no battle is coming, because if there is one certainty in the aftermath of Thanos, it is that they will do what they were made to do: avenge what was lost. And so much was lost. The battle of their lives is not behind them, not gone this day, but in front of them. Maybe they're the least likely of the Avengers, but they are still Avengers. Natasha isn't a soothsayer. She doesn't know how the next fight will come. But now she knows that they will meet it together.  



End file.
